Golf turf grass requires extensive cultivation to maintain optimal play quality. Normal machine operations such as top dressing and pesticide or fertilizer applications are disruptive to play and produce soil compaction and turf wear, which reduces overall turf quality. Because these separate operations generally must be performed during the day when golfers are present, equipment which makes it possible to combine two or three maintenance tasks into one operation should reduce the disruption of play, reduce turf wear and compaction, save time and labor expense, and allow for more rounds of golf to be played each day.
Current top dressing spreaders are a drop-type with finished brushes and a spinner-type. These types are used to apply wet or dry sand, and other materials, including other types of top dressing materials onto turf on golf courses, lawns, athletic fields, parks, and other recreational areas as part of a normal maintenance program. Both types of machines, especially the drop-type, are capable of applying wet or dry top dressing materials (generally sand) at fairly uniform thickness to turfs. However, these machines are heavy and produce undesirable turf compaction. The drop-type topdresser machines (topdressers) are slow and apply bands of sand merely as wide as the conveying belt that carries the sand to the dispenser. These types of machines in general range from 3 up to at least 6 feet in width. Thus the use of drop-type topdressers requires many passes over a large area in order to provide desired coverage with a top dressing material (top dressed area). The spinner-type topdressers spread material over much wider swaths (in general up to at least 40 feet in width), but spinner type machines are much heavier than the smaller topdressers. In general, the extra weight produces even greater turf damage and less uniform applications than drop-type top dressing machines.
Sprayer units are used for applying turf products to recreational turf (turf areas primarily used for recreation), especially golf course turf, and is part of a normal maintenance program. This practice generally occurs on a 14-day schedule throughout the growing season when disease, insect and weed pests are active. Sprayer units may be self-propelled or carried on other vehicles, and capable of spraying swaths up to 18 feet wide with the desired fungicides, insecticides, herbicides, soluble fertilizer, soil wetting agents, plant growth regulators and hormones, et cetera. However the weight of sprayer units produced turf compaction and interfered with play. Further, they produce a large amount of spray drift to non-target areas in addition to providing a health hazard by exposing the people applying the spray and the golfers to wet spray residues through inhalation, skin and clothing contact.